


Let Your Heart Take Over

by KillHitlerAgain



Series: Forduary 2019 [1]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Comfort, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dreams and Nightmares, Forduary, Gen, Nightmares, Post-Episode: s02e15 The Last Mabelcorn, Pre-Episode: s02e17 Dipper and Mabel vs. the Future, This probably wouldn't have happened but let me be happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-26 17:00:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17749901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KillHitlerAgain/pseuds/KillHitlerAgain
Summary: Ford has a nightmare. Mabel comes downstairs to see what's wrong.Written for Forduary 2019 - Week One: Comfort





	Let Your Heart Take Over

**Author's Note:**

> A Ford and Mabel fic for Forduary week one to go with my Stan and Mabel fic for Stanuary week one.
> 
> I actually finished this fic on Thursday but I was too distracted playing Breath of the Wild to edit and post it. So here it is now.
> 
> Thanks to GinAndShatteredDreams for beta-reading.

Ford was floating. He didn’t know which way was up and which was down. All around him, in every direction he looked, was a murky void. He couldn’t tell how far it went on. Was he looking onwards into infinity? Was he submerged in a substance that was so opaque that he was incapable of seeing through it? Or was he in an unknowable location, and there was simply no light?

 

He held his hands out in front of him, and they faded further away the farther he held them out. He motioned his arms and began to swim.

 

At first, it was easy. He felt light, and weightless. He could breathe as if they air was moving in and out of his lungs on its own. Slowly, moving his arms took more and more force, as if he went from swimming in water to swimming in paste. Pressure began to push onto him from every side of his body. His breaths become shallower and more forced.

 

His body tensed up. Panic gripped him. He wasn’t sure how, but he knew that he was being followed. He began to swim faster, pushing his body even further to its limit with each stroke. His mind slipped further and further into a frenzy as the void around him seemed to go from being paste to being tar. He couldn’t stop. He needed to swim faster. He needed to swim harder. He needed to go. Go. Go!

 

Something grabbed his leg. At first, an unidentifiable pressure. Soon, it morphed into something he began to recognize. A smooth, slimy tendril, but not one made of anything earthly. He kicked his legs frantically. The being did not react.

 

It began to coil its way up Ford’s form, gripping itself tightly. It began to pull backwards, dragging him with it. He tried with all his might to propel himself in another direction but he was overwhelmed.

 

He took one last, shallow breath before he felt as if he was ripped from his body in a single instant.

 

He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t move. All he could feel was his essence being quickly and violently forced downwards. He didn’t know where he would end up. He didn’t know when, or if, he would end up there. He only knew two things. 

 

He. Was. Terrified. And wherever he ended up, would be his own personal Hell.

 

He gasped for air. He had stopped falling. The pressure on his body had dissipated. He could feel the world around him and the ground beneath him again. But the fear had not left him.

 

Ford reached up and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. The sounds of the world filled his head. The crickets chirping from outside his window. The electric fan buzzing from the corner of the room.

 

He was in his house. In his room. He wasn’t in danger (At least, not any immediate danger), no, it was just a nightmare. And not the very real kind, no. It was simply the kind your brain creates when it decides you aren’t nervous enough at the moment.

 

Ford stood up and walked over to the light, turning it on. He looked at the clock. It was approximately 3am. Normally if he woke up this early, he’d simply brew a pot of coffee and start his day. But he wouldn't do that with the kids in the house. He wanted to set a good example for them. 

 

He grabbed a book from the shelf on the other side of the room. It was something boring, something that he’d read a hundred times despite knowing it would be just as mediocre as it was the first time he read it.

 

As he was settling back down on the couch, he heard the creaking of the stairs near his room. The thump of socked feet on the wooden planks came to a stop outside the door.

 

The door was pushed open gently, and he heard a small voice speak to him.

 

“Grunkle Ford? Are you okay?”

 

It was his niece, Mabel. He had hoped he hadn’t made too much noise in his sleep, but it seemed that was wrong. He must have woken her up.

 

“Yes, Mabel. I’m fine. It was just a nightmare. Go back to bed.”

 

After he dismissed her, he had expected to hear a “goodnight”, or the sound of his niece's footsteps heading back upstairs. But he didn’t hear either of those things. For a moment, all he heard was silence, before the door was pushed open wider and Mabel padded her way inside.

 

“...Was it Bill?” Her voice was quiet and wavering, as if saying his name too loud would summon him, even through the protective barrier.

 

He knew that tone too well, but he had wished he would have never had to hear it again, let alone from a child. 

 

“No, no. I understand your worry, but the unicorn hair you obtained was enough to completely protect that house from Bill. He can’t get to us in here.”

 

“That’s good.” Mabel stated pensively. She dug her foot into the carpet, holding on to a pause. “You still had a nightmare, though, and that’s not good. Whenever I have a nightmare, I meow at myself until I’m not scared anymore. But sometimes, that doesn’t work, so I crawl into bed with Dipper or my parents and we talk about it, or sometimes we just cuddle until we all fall back asleep.”

 

Ford sighed, and smiled softly at his niece’s innocent sweetness. He knew what she was offering, even though she didn’t state it directly. But he couldn’t accept it. He was too far down a road opposite hers, and that was where he belonged.

 

“I’m perfectly capable of handling this on my own, but thank you for the offer. Now, we should both be getting back to sleep, and if I remember correctly, your bed is upstairs.” He pushed for her to leave.

 

Instead of turning around and leaving, though, she trotted over to the foot of the sofa and looked at the book in his hands. What was she thinking?

 

“So, Dipper reads sometimes to try and get back to sleep, but it doesn’t work because he gets too focused on the book, and so he starts to talk to himself and clicking his pen and it’s really annoying. But, one time, I got so annoyed that I took the book from him and insisted that I was going to read the book, instead, out loud, and instead of making him mad like I thought it would, he just fell asleep.”

 

“...Yes?” Ford was puzzled. Was she just going to talk to him to avoid having to go back to bed?

 

Mabel seemed to realize he didn’t understand what she was saying.

 

“Sorry, my point was, that I see the book you’re reading and you’re a lot like Dipper and so I thought that maybe I could read the book to you instead of you reading it by yourself.”

 

Ah, yes, so she was just going to talk to him to avoid having to go to bed. He wanted to refuse, to just tell her to go away. But when he looked at her and opened his mouth, he found he couldn’t do it. If she was giving him puppy dog eyes, he could. But she wasn’t. No, the look on her face wasn’t the one that a child gives when asking for another cookie, it was a genuine look of concern and worry. It made him wonder if it was actually him that woke her up.

 

He gave in, handing the book to her and scooting over so that she could sit next to him. She smiled and happily obliged, opening it to the first page and beginning to read.

 

The book did turn out to be as boring as he remembered it. It was so boring, in fact, that Mabel fell asleep about three pages in. Ford looked over at her. He knew he should wake her up and send her back upstairs, but part of him didn’t want to. And with as tired as he was, he let that part (That part he usually didn’t let take over) get what it wanted, as he wrapped his arms around his niece and drifted off to sleep.

 

He didn’t have any more bad dreams that night.


End file.
